Effective Workplace communication (2)
Some Writing and Editing Tips
By Leonard Kok

Nathaniel Hawthorne once said: “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” Think about it – in order to ensure that our audience gets the message, we have got to do our utmost to facilitate their understanding. Which is why good, clear writing is something we should pay attention to; and if we do, the rewards will be great. The following are some tips which will help all who aspire to write clearly.

Headings and Sub-headings

After determining your goal and intended audience, one of our first tasks is to situate our objectives into paragraphs and present them in a systematic order. Headings and sub-headings help us to make our paragraphs clear and readable. They act as guides and markers; traffic lights; if you like, to direct your reader’s attention to the goal. This will prove to be especially helpful if you need to write a paper or a long proposal for your clients.

If You Are In Marketing

If you are in the Marketing Department and need to write attractive brochures, it pays to know how to be creative with the language. In addition, it will be a bonus to know something about the cadence which the language produces as well. What is cadence? It is a term used in music and it means the rhythmic property imparted by the accents and relative duration of notes in a piece of music. However, cadence also means the number of beats of the syllables and the effect they produce. Let’s take an example of a classical tongue twister:

Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers. How many packs of pickled peppers did Peter Piper really pick?

The effect of reading the plosive sound ‘P’ produces a fun effect. Moreover, it will cause the reader to remember the example. This is definitely an objective achieved if our intended reader remembers our example. If you are selling the popular tourist destination, Bintan, make it more memorable by using “Beautiful Bintan” instead.

Awesome Alliterations

The above examples are what we call alliterations. If you need to use a noun, it will be more interesting to throw in an adjective before the noun with the same consonant or even vowel sounds. Thus, the tongue twister is made up of alliterations of the consonant ‘P’.

Consider these humorous examples:

- Bo’s boyfriend badgered Bo to buy a bikini.[B is alliterated]

- She seldom swallow her secrets; she scatters them like seeds.[S is alliterated]

Because we spend time crafting the text, they will certainly be more memorable!

Editing – Some Powerful Tips

Our brains seek for constancy, regularity, routines and systems. Thus, this is counter-productive for editors and would-be editors. Consider the following example from the Internet. There are missing letters but see whether you can get the meaning:

It is vry esy to fll in lve with someoe whom yu wrk wih vry clsely, espcialy on a prjet. You meet an attrctiv prsn who shars the sme wrk objctivs as yo, have fruent metins with the same clints and have colectie memries. And it dosn’t help if the other person is subtly fliratious and very genrous with bdy langage like toches on the sholder, arm, bck and so on. Opn up your hert to the persn’s words of cofort and encoraement and you are opning up a chanel of a whole gaut of felings; which are usully conterprdutive at the worplae, says a counsllor. Hover, what you ned to rember is that it is not ftal if you are awre of it and get out of the stiky sitation. Also remeber that to err is hman and ackowledgent and move on – is dvne.

So, if our brain looks for patterns, then what do we need to do to ensure that our writing is properly edited? How do we do this?

Reading it Aloud

By reading what you have written aloud, you listen to what have been written. This is a very conscious attempt to activate the grammatical part of our brain to function as the editor. Together with grammatical correctness, the semantics and content part of editorial work also kick in. This would minimise or rid the text of errors.

Reading it Backwards

If our brain can be ‘deceived’ into accepting typos as correct, then ‘going against the grain’ will help. Going against the grain basically means reading backwards so that we are more conscious of errors in the sentences. This is very helpful as it again triggers the ‘censor’ to activate itself.

Put it On Hibernation Mode

When we are so intensely focused on a task, it pays to take a break from the same task and to engage the mind to do other tasks which are totally different from what you have been doing. Better still, play a game or take a walk and come back. Our eyes will see the text afresh and it will help you.

Use Magnification Devices

If you need help physically in order to do editing, then there are hardware and software to assist you – magnifying glass in the computer or a screen to put over the LCD screen.

We hope that editing will be an easier task for all of us who need to work with words on a daily basis! Cheers!